HipChat: Communication for Teams, Made Easy!

If you are managing a web design or development project, you must already be aware of the fact that collaboration is the key to the success of the project. If your team fails to interact and collaborate well, the project will fail as well.

This is especially important if you manage a distributed team across different countries and time zones. In such cases, the role of a proper communication channel becomes paramount.

Allow me to introduce you to HipChat, a new tool that offers instant messaging, group and private chats, file sharing and a lot more to help your team members interact and collaborate effectively.

What is HipChat?

HipChat is a simple tool for team chat and instant messaging purposes. It helps your team members collaborate and discuss the key points of the given project at hand. As such, HipChat can help you get out of that cluttered email inbox, and be more productive.

Apart from IM and chat functionality, HipChat also offers file sharing capabilities, and a lot more.

Features

Here is what HipChat brings to the table:

• HipChat provides IM, group chats and private chats.


• Just in case you are wondering, it also offers video and voice calls.


• Users can share files and videos, etc.


• HipChat is free, irrespective of the number of users your team might have.


• It offers native apps for virtually every operating system that you can think of: iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, Linux… you name it!


• HipChat uses 256-bit SSL encryption and is fully secure.


• You can even deploy HipChat on your own server!


• Beyond that, HipChat can also integrate with third party services, such as Asana, Google Hangouts, and Heroku. See the full list here.

Pricing

All sounds cool? Wondering how costly it might be?

Well, HipChat offers a very simple pricing structure. The Free plan is totally free for life, and the Paid plan is per user/month. The difference between the two is straightforward: the paid plan offers video and voice calls, as well as screen sharing.

Furthermore, the free plan storage space is capped at 5 GB, whereas the paid plan offers unlimited storage.

Appraisal

HipChat seems to be an indispensable tool, for both distributed and non-distributed teams.

Collaboration via email has, time and again, proven to be ridiculously cluttered — and people fall for the “reply to all” button even today! Plus, most team collaboration tools tend to offer IM or discussions as a side note — their primary focus is on task management and/or content management, and you are at best left with a small chat applet or a discussion thread to help you sort your interaction issues.

Thus, HipChat is trying to fill a void that does exist, and by and large, can prove to be a really beneficial product for both big and small teams. With its free plan, you get a taste of the basic features, but even the paid plan is too easy on the pocket, and you should surely give it a try! Most certainly, HipChat will help boost the overall productivity of your team by fostering easier communication and collaboration.

This post has been sponsored by Syndicate Ads.

The post HipChat: Communication for Teams, Made Easy! appeared first on Speckyboy Web Design Magazine.

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HipChat: Communication for Teams, Made Easy!